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The Princess of Cherry Pie.

There was once a great king who had a beautiful daughter whom he loved above all his other children. He called her his little Princess of Cherry Pie. He gave her everything she desired, including her own castle and servants to do with as she wished. And in return, the princess was a dutiful and obedient daughter.

The great king visited his daughter only rarely, for he had important business ruling his vast empire. But when he did visit her, he would bring her gifts and presents from the corners of his kingdom, jewels and furs and exotic fruits. On these rare visits, he would bring her whatever she desired because she was his youngest daughter and she deserved it all, he told her.

And then one day the king died. His daughter mourned him to such a degree that she lay down on her bed and remained there for weeks refusing to move. She would rise only during the night, when everyone else was asleep and would spin incessantly until morning. How could her father have died and left her alone, she asked herself constantly? How could she bear to live without him?

As the weeks grew into months, and the months into years, she became ever more bitter and resentful at the world, until her heart became surrounded by a forest of hurts. Around her palace there grew acres of nettles, thorny hawthorns and matted brambles. Soon no-one could penetrate that wilderness to reach her heart. No-one could reach her without enduring the stings barbs and cruel thorns of her tongue.

Until one day, a young man did manage to beat a path to her gate. Bruised, stung and punctured by thorns and nettles he fought his way to her castle and pledged the princess his service of everlasting love. She returned his love. And many a night by the light of the moon, they would sit gazing into each other’s eyes and making plans,

The princess of Cherry Pie promised to make her suitor a jacket studded with precious jewels, like the one her father had worn, stitched with golden threads she had spun with her own white hands. He would look so handsome in it! He promised her that he would clear the forests of harsh hawthorn and plough over the wilderness of nettles. She would have garden of roses and an orchard filled with every exotic fruit on earth. But the princess told him that she had grown fond of her wilderness. It protected her solitude. The weeds and the matted brambles must stay. They reminded her of her father and of the many years she been compelled to suffer in the world without him. They were now in keeping with the tradition of the castle. She did not require them to be removed.

And so, every time the prince came to visit his beloved princess, he was stung and cut and hurt. Nursing his bruises, he began to come less often, and the path he had beaten to her door became narrower and narrower. Slowly the wilderness began to reclaim its former property. The prince, weary of the struggle, wrote her lengthy letters explaining his absences. But the princess, angry at him, replied in shorter epistles declaring: “I love you with all my heart. But you no longer love me. How can you be so cruel! Why are you abandoning me?”

He could not make her understand. The road to her palace became impassable with weeds and thickets of barbed hawthorn. And there was no-one brave enough to venture through it.

The princess became older, and returned to her midnight spinning, sewing together a suit studded with the most expensive jewels from her father’s treasures. In the evenings, when the moon was full, she would stare out over the vast wilderness she had allowed to grow around her hoping to see her lover fighting his way through the undergrowth to reach her. But she was never bothered by outside suitors again.